Being Good

God, Life 0

As long as the natural life is in your body, it will do a lot towards repairing that body.  Cut it, and up to a point it will heal, as a dead body would not.  A live body is not one that never gets hurt, but one that can to some extent repair itself.  In the same way a Christian is not a man who never goes wrong, but a man who is enabled to repent and pick himself up and begin over again after each stumble….

The Christian thinks any good he does comes from the Christ-life inside him.  He does not think God will love us because we are good, but that God will make us good because He loves us; just as the roof of a greenhouse does not attract the sun because it is bright, but becomes bright because the sun shines on it.

— C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, quoted in A Year with C. S. Lewis

Working Together for Good

Forgiveness, God, Healing, Life, Trials 0

If you’re a child of God, the ordeal you’re undergoing, however wrong or unfair or heartless it may be or may have been, in His providence and skillful hands will be used to take you somewhere good — deeper into His heart, to a place of greater dependence and trust, more perfectly refined into the likeness of Christ.

— Nancy Leigh DeMoss, Choosing Forgiveness, p. 107

A Gift to the World

God, Healing, Joy, Life 0

A sacred choice is an extremely personal decision for each of us.  Only you can make that decision.  By listening to your spirit, by having a good relationship with God — it’s amazing how much easier this is once you change those tribal beliefs about who God is and what God thinks of you — and by being willing to heal yourself, the choice will be clear.  And thanks to the ripple effect, everyone around you will feel your happiness and high vibration.  What a wonderful gift to give the world.

— Christel Nani, Sacred Choices, p. 306

Justice is God’s

Forgiveness, God 0

We sometimes feel that, if we forgive someone, justice will not be served.  They’ll get off scot-free.  We’ll be doing little more than giving them permission to do wrong again, seeing how easily we let them get away with it this time.

From a human perspective, this makes sense.  But our minds need to be renewed to think God’s way.  According to God’s Word, wrongdoers will get their just due.  But we’re not the ones responsible to mete out the penalty….

Letting the offender off your hook doesn’t mean he’s off God’s hook.  Forgiveness releases the accused from your custody and turns him over to God — the righteous Judge — the one and only One who is both able and responsible for meting out justice.

And so what feels like the height of unfairness, what seems to be nothing more than giving our offender the pass, actually becomes for us a step of freedom….

But listen to Joseph’s response to his distraught brothers:  “Don’t be afraid.  Am I in the place of God?” (Genesis 50:19 NIV).

What wise, humble words!  Am I in the place of God?  Is it my job to make you pay for what you’ve done?  Do I really want the added burden of this after all I’ve been through already?  Isn’t it foolish to think that revenge could be as sweet as advertised — sweet enough to make up for the pain of all these years?

— Nancy Leigh DeMoss, Choosing Forgiveness, p. 92-94

Forgiveness from Christ

Forgiveness, God 0

While forgiveness is indeed costly, it is not beyond the means of those who have Christ’s life flowing within them.  When God tells us to love our enemies, He also gives us the love to go along with the command.

Yes, you can do this… because He can do this….

And so because He has forgiven us — and because of His boundless life which now indwells us — what offense is too great for us to forgive?

— Nancy Leigh DeMoss, Choosing Forgiveness, p. 90-92

He is Present

God, Trials 0

And yet, paradoxically, during those years of struggle, not believing in him, not seeing him, having no faith at all, I nevertheless felt him there.  He was present in my anger.  Present in my loneliness.  Present in my world’s refusal to be what I wanted it to be, and present in his own denial of anything I wanted to make him into.  Present.  With me.  Patiently waiting for me to turn and see him.  And still I struggled.

— Patty Kirk, Confessions of an Amateur Believer, p. 67